Podcasts : Americana from BBC Radio 4 – Baseball (17 October 2010)

Americana steps up to bat around the relationship between Americans and baseball. The historian, John P. Rossi, explains how and when baseball became so deeply intertwined with America's national identity. The sports writer, Frank Deford, reflects on the heroes of the game and the National Symphony Orchestra musician, Glenn Donnellan, performs a few songs on his homemade 'batolin', a violin made from a baseball bat.

Listen to the program :

 

To download and subscribe to this podcast, click on the above image to visit the website.

Interesting Sites : BBC Podcasts - Americana: inside the USA

For B1+/B2 level and above students, this could be an interesting podcast to listen to in order to work on listening skills.

Americana: inside the USA

Americana: An insider’s guide to the stories shaping the USA today. From Washington DC and broadcast every Sunday, at 7.15 pm, Matt Frei is your host. On offer, discussion and insight from some of the best known names and voices in America.

• Updated:
  Weekly
• Average duration:
  27 minutes

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BBC - Podcasts - Americana: inside the USA

Featured Podcast : Celebrating Independence Day With Parades, Fireworks and Water Balloon Fights (from VOA Special English)

http://www1.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/american-life/people/Independence-Day-97620419.html

Or download MP3 (Right-click or option-click and save link)

DOUG JOHNSON: Welcome to American Mosaic in VOA Special English.

(MUSIC)

I’m Doug Johnson.

Today we tell about Independence Day in the United States. This Fourth of July will mark America’s two hundred and thirty-fourth birthday.

We also answer a listener question about a famous American general.

And we hear a poem about the American flag by country singer Johnny Cash.

(MUSIC)

Independence Day

DOUG JOHNSON: The Fourth of July marks the anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence from Britain. During the summer of seventeen seventy-six, American colonists were deeply divided. Almost one in three was loyal to Britain. Yet most were increasingly angry about what they considered unfair treatment by the British government. By June, fighting had already taken place between colonial forces and Britain. The idea of independence was spreading.

Delegates from the thirteen colonies gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Continental Congress decided that a document declaring separation from Britain should be declared. Thomas Jefferson led a committee chosen to write it.

**(TO READ MORE, CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE)**

Interesting Sites For Improving Your English : Australia Network

Australia Network is an international television and radio network which is raising awareness about Australia.

They also have a whole site dedicated to learning English with video podcasts and learning programs you can subscribe to. To visit the “Learning English” page, go to : http://australianetwork.com/learningenglish/

Internet Sites For Improving Your English : Storynory

Storynory (www.storynory.com) is a great and fun site you can use to improve your listening comprehension. You can download audio stories (new stories, fairy tales, myths and histories) in MP3 format and read the transcripts on the site. AND IT’S FREE ! !

While reading the story on the website, if you double click on a word, you’ll be given an option of languages to choose from for a translation.

Here are links to the classic King Arthur tale of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”

• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Part One (right click and save)
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Part Two (right click and save)

For the transcript of these two stories, visit www.storynory.com

Featured Podcast : Half of US Jobs Now Held by Women (VOA News)

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report. (19 Nov 2009) - http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2009-11-19-voa3.cfm

To download the MP3 audio file to the report, right click with your mouse HERE

 

Women are on their way to holding more than half of all American jobs. The latest government report shows that their share of nonfarm jobs nearly reached fifty percent in September. Not only have more and more women entered the labor market over the years, but the recession has been harder on men. In October the unemployment rate for men was almost eleven percent, compared to eight percent for women.

Industries that traditionally use lots of men have suffered deep cuts. For example, manufacturing and building lost more jobs last month. But health care and temporary employment services have had job growth. Both of those industries employ high percentages of women.

Thirty years ago, women earned sixty-two cents for every dollar that men earned. Now, for those who usually work full time, women earn about eighty percent of what men earn. And women hold fifty-one percent of good-paying management and professional jobs.

Yet a study released Thursday said men still hold about nine out of every ten top positions at the four hundred largest companies in California. The results have remained largely unchanged in five years of studies from the University of California, Davis.

Also, a new research paper in the journal Sex Roles looks at the experiences of women who are the main earners in their family. Rebecca Meisenbach at the University of Missouri in Columbia interviewed fifteen women. She found they all valued their independence and many enjoyed having the power of control, though not all wanted it.

But they also felt pressure, worry and guilt. Partly that was because of cultural expectations that working women will still take care of the children. Also, men who are not the main earners may feel threatened.

The job market continues to suffer the effects of last year's financial crash. Now, a judgment has been reached in the first case involving charges of criminal wrongdoing on Wall Street.

Last week, the government lost its case against two managers at Bear Stearns, the first investment bank to fail last year. A jury found Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin not guilty of lying to investors.

The hedge funds they supervised lost their value in two thousand seven. But jurors said there was no clear evidence that they meant to mislead investors.

The Justice Department continues to investigate other companies.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. I'm Steve Ember.

Featured Podcast : English Café 49 by ESL Pod

In this podcast from www.eslpod.com, you learn about some cultural and societal aspects of the United States. In this podcast dated from September 2006, you’ll learn about Labor Day in the United States and American charitable organizations. To listen to or download this MP3 lesson, go to: ESL Café 49

Featured Podcast : ESL Podcast 402 – Buying Back-to-School Supplies

Well, it was back to school this week and I’m sure all you parents had to go out spend tons of money to buy school supplies for your kids. So today I’m featuring another podcast from www.eslpod.com dated August of 2008 concerning the purchasing of above mentioned supplies. In it you’ll find some simple vocabulary in English for describing some of these items.

As in the other podcasts from this site, you’ll first hear a short, slowly spoken dialogue followed by a clear and precise explanation of the vocabulary. At the end of the lesson, the dialogue will be repeated but at native speed.

The MP3 download is free but there is also a Learning Guide available for which you would have to become a paid subscriber. In the Learning Guide you’ll find extra notes, the vocabulary, exercises and the entire transcript of the podcast. I highly recommend subscribing but if you can’t, you will still learn a lot from the MP3 file!!

To access this podcast, go to: http://www.eslpod.com/website/show_podcast.php?issue_id=5739071

Featured Podcast : British Council Learning English - Beaches

The summer break is coming to end and the new school year starts up this week. I’m sure you’ll want to talk all bout your summer vacation (in English of course!).

Today I’m featuring a themes podcast brought to you by the British Council’s Learning English website. On the link below, you’ll find not only a podcast about beaches, but articles and online exercises you can do to reinforce the vocabulary. Explore the site for other themes among some of the most recent themes are parts of the body, indigenous peoples, India, etc..

I highly recommend this site. Here’s the direct link to today’s featured podcast:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-podcasts-themes-beaches

Featured Podcast : ESL Podcast 489 – Talking About Wealth

I have featured this podcast site on several occasions due to its wealth of vocabulary and cultural information about the United States. It is definitely one of the best out there, if not the best. The mp3 podcasts are free. However, if you want the learning guide you need to subscribe. The learning guide includes not only the dialogue but the transcript of the entire podcast plus further vocabulary explanations and exercises. Visit their homepage for further information: http://www.eslpod.com/website/index_new.html 

Today, I have chosen one of their podcast discussing terms to talk about wealth! It is rich in idiomatic expressions!  To visit the page where you can read the dialogue and download the podcast, go to: ESL Podcast 489 – Talking About Wealth

In each podcast, you’ll hear a dialogue spoken at a slow speed followed by an extensive explanation of the vocabulary. At the end, you’ll hear the dialogue again spoken at native speed. Each podcast is like having your own private English lesson! I very highly recommend this site.

Featured Podcast : BBC World Service Documentary – Death Diminishes Me

Five men from New Zealand paint a soundscape of memory, loss and regret as suffered by those living with HIV. They relate stories of loneliness and deep isolation - as most HIV positive Kiwis don't know anyone else with the virus.

Visit the page at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/07/000000_global_perspective_death_diminishes.shtml

Download (mp3) (Right click with your mouse to save to your computer)

DEATH DIMINISHES ME

Fifteen funerals within five years – that's the situation Shane found himself in the early 1990s when his friends started dying from AIDS related illnesses.

Shane is one of five HIV positive men from New Zealand who share their personal reflections and stories in Death Diminishes Me as they work towards self-acceptance.

The men have been living with HIV for over 20 years - coping with both the physical and psychological implications. Some of the shared experiences include the dramatic loss of confidence, having to 'come out' a second time and dealing with the stigma of being diagnosed HIV positive. "Who do I tell, what do I tell?" asks Shane.

"Through their openness we begin to glimpse unspoken truths about how homosexuality and HIV are dealt with in New Zealand society," says producer Gareth Watkins.

Death Diminishes Me asks the listener to consider what isolates people from, and what connects them to their friends, family and each other.

Symbol of hope

Throughout the work we hear excerpts from Michael Parmenter's A Long Undressing - an autobiographical theatre/dance-work that premiered in 1995 to great acclaim:

"We use memory as a way of reclaiming what has been taken away. To value even the feeling of loss, is to value life itself - and so to begin to live again"

Prose, interview and reflection all form the foreground, while fragments of half-remembered sounds form the background - a school yard, a summer's day, the beep-beep-beep of a machine that sustains life.

"Even though there is a lot of apparent darkness in Death Diminishes Me, there's also a lot of burning hope" says Gareth.

"The very fact that most of these men are still here after 20 years with HIV is a strong symbol of hope. The fact that they have coped and become stronger while watching friends and loved-ones die. The fact that they still stand tall is a testament to their will and hope to live.

"Ultimately death does not diminish us. It makes us, and those around us have greater insight into who and what we are."

First broadcast on Friday 17 July 2009

Interesting Internet Sites For Improving Your English: Listen to English – Learn English

Thanks to Raphaël from Monday evening’s class for bringing this site to my attention! If you find other sites you think could be interesting, don’t hesitate bringing them to my attention. I just might link to them from this blog!! 

A very good site for practicing your listening skills!!

You can subscribe to the RSS feed (les flux) of this site to download podcasts on a variety of topics, particularly from British culture. There is a transcript for each podcast and sometimes there is a comprehension quiz. To visit the site, click on the banner above!

Podcast: The American Presidency – Theodore Roosevelt

Author: Robert Dallek

In this first lecture in a series touching on how the U.S. Presidency changed during the 20th century, noted historian Robert Dalek begins with his take on Theodore Roosevelt.

Download File - 14.5 MB (right click with mouse and save to your computer)

This is for a higher level (B1+ and above). You’ll also get to enjoy a typical Boston accent in this podcast!

For other podcasts on US presidents, go to: U.S. Presidents Podcast from Learning Out Loud

British Council – Learning English Professionals: Advice on Writing CVs

I’m posting this for the students in the action régionale in Haguenau.

Go to the following site: Advice on writing CVs

The above site contains activities and audio files to help you write a CV in English.

ESL Pod: ESL Podcast 453 – Making an Emergency Medical Call

To continue with the theme of how the telephone is used in emergencies, go to the following link to download an MP3 podcast: ESL Podcast 453 – Making an Emergency Medical Call

Culture Spot: Jesse Ramsden (Podcast from Engines of Our Ingenuity)

Taken directly from: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2476.htm

You can listen to other great podcasts from this site with access to the transcripts with which you can work on your listening comprehension skills! To access Engines of Our Ingenuity, click on the image below!

JESSE RAMSDEN

by John H. Lienhard

Right click here to download the podcast!

Today, Jesse Ramsden. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

One day, in the late eighteenth century, Jesse Ramsden went down to the palace of King George III in Kew Gardens. He wasn't expected; he had to talk his way in. He finally got his audience and was graciously received. Then he presented the King with a scientific instrument that he'd built on order -- maybe a sextant or a telescope, I don't know. The King admired it, then said,

I have been told, Mr. Ramsden, that you are ... the least punctual of any man in England; you have brought home this instrument on the very day ... appointed. You have mistaken only the year.

For the King to let Ramsden off with so gentle a scolding says volumes about Ramsden's stature as an instrument maker.

Compared with other monarchs of his time, King George lived a pretty simple and monogamous life. He was also a devoted student of science and agriculture, seriously interested in the latest scientific tools. That's why he hired Jesse Ramsden to build his instruments.

  Ramsden, born in Yorkshire in 1735, apprenticed as a clothworker and he began in that business. But his growing fascination with scientific devices led him to begin a new apprenticeship as a maker of mathematical instruments at the age of 21. That was old for an apprentice. But he excelled and was soon running his own business.

He also found a welcome in the wealthy family of John Dollond. Dollond held the first patent for an achromatic lens. Previous lenses all suffered from chromatic aberration -- rainbow fringes of light around the edges of objects. You and I were bothered by that in our early digital cameras. That's because lenses refract each color differently. Each color has a slightly different focus.

The first solution, invented by others but patented by Dollond, was to put a second lens with different refractive properties next to the first. Ramsden went on to use and improve that delicate technology. (He also married Dollond's daughter, Sarah.)

Yet lenses were only a fraction of all he made. He built circle dividers, sextants, balances, protractors, slide rules, transits, barometers ... He had a staff of some fifty workers, and his quality control seemed to surpass sanity. He was famous for missing deadlines. He drove clients (like King George) to distraction. Small wonder that, when he died in 1800, Dollond family executors could recoup only a tiny fraction of all the money owed him.

Ramsden exemplified a conviction that lay behind the Age of Enlightenment -- that all understanding flowed from precise measurement. Later science would turn to statistical inference, probabilistic analysis -- and ultimately quantum physics which would take us quite beyond measurement's reach.

  But now I hold an antiquarian catalog of Ramsden's instruments -- all masterpieces of hand-etching in brass and steel. And I smile the smug Enlightenment smile-of-reason at King George's year-long wait -- while Ramsden brought his instrument as close to perfection as one might approach, without offending his own Maker.

I'm John Lienhard at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.

(Theme music)

---

A. Chapman, Ramsden, Jesse (1735-1800), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. ?, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): pp. 963-966.

The image of Ramsden is courtesy of Wikipedia Commons. All other images are from Tesseract: Early Scientific Instruments catalogs, Issues 86 and 87, Winter 2008/2009 and Spring 2009. (Co-published with Rittenhouse: the Journal of the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise.)

See also the Wikipedia entries on Jesse Ramsden, King George III, John Dolland, chromatic aberration, and achromatic lenses.

ESL Pod: Being in Debt

Alas, this podcast is probably too relevant to a lot of us considering the economic downturn. This podcast has some excellent vocabulary for describing living in debt.

Here’s the link to the dialogue transcript and MP3 podcast download page: ESL Podcast 424 – Being in Debt

Podcasts for ‘Action régionale – Session du printemps’ in Haguenau (updated 26 April 09)

These podcasts are targeted to the students in the Action Régionale in Haguenau and supplement the topics being covered in the course. To view the dialogue script and to listen to or download the MP3 file, go to the following links:

FROM ESLPOD.COM

ESL Podcast 41 - Tough Negotiations

ESL Podcast 42 - Formal Emails

ESL Podcast 43 - Getting an Interview

ESL Podcast 44 - Making a Good Impression

ESL Podcast 56 - Hiring for a Job

ESL Podcast 76 - Asking for and Giving Instructions

ESL Podcast 79 - Disagreeing Politely in a Business Setting

ESL Podcast 86 - Asking About Jobs

ESL Podcast 103 - Making a Sales Call

ESL Podcast 124 - Asking for Clarification in a Business Meeting

ESL Podcast 127 - Answering Machine Messages

ESL Podcast 132 - Getting Through on the Phone

ESL Podcast 135 - Scheduling a Meeting

ESL Podcast 146 - Suggestions at Work

ESL Podcast 162 - Training a New Employee

ESL Podcast 170 - Questions and Answers at a Presentation

ESL Podcast 181 – Company Profiles

ESL Podcast 184 – Running a Meeting

ESL Podcast 188 – Correcting Misunderstandings at Work

ESL Podcast 190 – Taking a Phone Message

ESL Podcast 193 – Placing a Business Order

ESL Podcast 200 – Meeting a Deadline

ESL Podcast 208 – Corporate Image

ESL Podcast 220 – Giving Opinions in a Meeting

ESL Podcast 243 – Speaking to a Store Clerk on the Phone

ESL Podcast 255 – Questions About a Product

ESL Podcast 280 – Viral Marketing

ESL Podcast 288 – A Business Contract

ESL Podcast 300 – Arriving for an Appointment

ESL Podcast 304 – A Potential Partnership Meeting

ESL Podcast 312 – Different Work Styles

ESL Podcast 332 – Profit and Loss

ESL Podcast 380 – Hiring Temp Workers

ESL Podcast 404 – Delegating Work

ESL Podcast 408 – Calling Someone You Haven’t Met About a Job

ESL Podcast 426 – Talking About Product Quality

ESL Podcast 436 – Dealing With an Angry Client

ESL Podcast 448 – Making Business Contacts

ESL Podcast 460 – Working in a Bad Economy

ESL Podcast 471 - Trying to Get Off the Phone

ESL Podcast 464 – Talking About Inventory

Also check out the podcasts at: http://www.businessenglishpod.com/

ESL Pod: Planting a Garden

It’s spring and it’s time to plant the garden, here’s a link to a MP3 podcast and  script about that very topic!! Check it out and don’t forget to check out the other great topics from www.eslpod.com

Here’s the link: ESL Podcast 419 – Planting a Garden

Note: the podcast is free but if you’d like the study guide, you’ll have to subscribe.

The Job Interview – 2 Podcasts from BusinessEnglishPod.com

This post is for the students in the Action Régionale in Haguenau. Here are the two podcast links I promised you.

BEP 40 ADV - Job Interviews: First Round Interview (Part 1)

Today’s Business English Podcast ESL lesson is the first in a two-part series that follows job applicant William Chow through his first interview at an international bank.

In this podcast you’ll learn how to deal with some typical first round job interview questions. Along the way you’ll also practice some great new vocabulary and useful phrases for job interviews.

In the dialogue we’ll listen as William gets interviewed for a position in the business development department of the main Hong Kong branch of Mercantile International. Mike Warner, a HR manager at Mercantile International Hong Kong, is conducting the interview.

BEP 40 ADV - Job Interviews: First Interview (Part 1) [20:40m]:  Download (to download, right click with your mouse)

BEP 41 ADV - Job Interviews: First Round (Part 2)

BEP 41 ADV - This is the second in a two-part Business English Pod lesson on first round job interviews. You’ll practice responding to common interview questions and learn some useful phrases and vocabulary.

As you’ll remember from the first episode, Mike Barnes is interviewing William Chow for a job at the Hong Kong head office of First Mercantile International, a global bank. William had just finished telling Mike about his work history, management style and personal characteristics. Our HR manager, Mike, continues the interview with another very common first round question. Lets see what it is and think about how you would answer the question?

You can download a PDF list of useful phrases to describe your personal characteristics by ‘right-clicking’ on this link and selecting the ‘save’ option.

BEP 41 ADV – Job Interviews – First Round (Part 2) [20:01m]: Download (to download, right click with your mouse)

BusinessEnglishPod.com is an excellent site for professional English. Downloading and listening to podcasts are free. However, if you want a study guide, you must subscribe to the service for which you’ll have to pay.

http://www.businessenglishpod.com/